9+ A R. POR. T R. AT LAR.G T HE end of the VIetnamese night- mare, like that of most night- mares, was swift. Though the relTIemhrance, the doubts, and the re- criminations will certainly linger, the long torment was over. There was a sort of ironic lOgIc in the sequence of grotesque events that culminated in the uncon tested capture of Saigon on April 30th, a few hours after the departure of the last of almost fourteen hundred rear-guard Americans and a hundred and fifteen thousand Vietnamese. Ev- e rything that happened dunng that fateful week provided the North Viet- namese with an additional pretext for seizing the capital immediately; they didn't have to fight their way in or conduct any meaningless and tÏme- consuming political negotiations. It is now known, through intelligence sources, that, while the North Viet- namese were pretending to be willing to negotiate, they had decided, as far back as the last week of March, after the capture of the Central Highlands, to go for broke-and they may have decided to seek outright military vic- tory long before that. \Vith the South Vietnamese defenses collapsing, it was e'lsy for the Communists to encircle the city, rocket and homh the surrounding areas, and adopt a tough stand, refus- ing anv compromise with the quarrel- SOll1e Southern leaders, who moved far too late and far too slowly to establish a new government-though in fact Hanoi had no intention of dealing with any Saigon government except as an instrull1ent of surrender. Ha. ving been permitted, under the terlTIS of the Paris peace agreell1ent of Jdnuary 27, 1973, to keep large num- bers of troops in South Vietnam, and having received ample military aid from the COll1munist powers-particularly the Soviet Union-Hanoi, it now ap- pears, was merely propagandizing when it suggested the possibility of ar- ranging a new ceasefire and establish- ing a coalition government. (This de- cision, in fact, had even leaked out through some Communist diplomats.) Once it became obvious that the United States was no longer willing to resup- ply the South Vietnamese militarily, the North Vietnamese knew that they could get almost anything they wanted. \Vhat they wanted was Saigon, and by capturing it outright they not only have made it unnecessary to include any members of the former SaIgon re- gime in the new government (though 5 AIGON EXIT a few may play minor roles after being "reëducated") but-more significant, as far as they are concerned-have in all likelihood reduced the importance of the Provisional Revolutionary Gov- ernment in the South, not all of whose members have been eager to come un- der Hanoi's total domination. Even though the P .R.G. has always been a complete instrument of the Communist Vietnamese Workers' Party (Lao- dong), the P.R.G. leaders-including the apparent Prime Minister-designate, Huynh Tan Phat-will now, it ap- pears, have any independent impulses they may harbor still more strictly lim- ited than they had anticipated. Their Hanoi overlords, headed for the mo- ment by General Tran Van Tra, will transmit their orders through the now surfacing People's Revolutionary Par- ty, the main Communist apparatus in the South. T HE role played at the end by the Americans was peculiarly ambiva- lent. Finally, on April 21 st, after pro- crastinating for weeks, Ambassador Graham A Martin, with the help of the French Ambassador, Jean-Mane Mérillon, persuaded President Nguyen Van Thieu to resign. But Martin held back on recommending the complete evacuation of i\.mericans, of their Viet- namese employees, and of political friends, because he was afraid th'lt such a move would paniC' the population and so influence the Communists' choice be- tween military and political action. He did not realize, or would not admit, that the choice of military action hdd already been made. For months, Mar- tin had performed diplomatically as a lone wolf (a tendency he had dIsplayed earlier In his career), and his pro- consular status in Vietnam had been unchallenged, because Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was preoccupied with other matters and had, according to people close to the State Depart- ment, lost interest in South Vietnam- which he privately regarded as prett) much of a hopeless cause Having forced on the South Vietnamese an agreement that they considered dis- tasteful and dangerous, Kissinger masked his own cynicism by continuing to support Thieu-whom he actually disliked in tensely for having tried to cross him on the Paris agreement-be- cause of his compulsion for supporting anti-Communist dllies no matter how ineffective they might be and because he had always felt that the overthrow of President Ngo Dinh Diem, in No- vember, ] 963, with American help, had been a tragic blunder. Since Mar- tin shared Kissinger's views, he was left in command. Shortly past ten o'clock on the morning of April 29th, after making a hazardous personal Inspection of the precarious situation at Tan Son Nhut Airport and after talking with Kis- singer, MartIn gave the order for the final evacuation-which I watched un- til I at last boarded a helicopter that afternoon. In view of the long delay and the extremely difficult circum- stances, the evacuation was surprisingly successful. The hehcopter oper dtion, which had been the last and the least desirable-because the most danger- ous-of four options the i\.mericans considered (the first was an evacuation mostly by ship, and the second and third were versions of an exodus by fixed-wing transport planes), was bril- liantly conducted by Marine helicopter pilots, flying to units of the American Seventh Fleet, nearly half of which was standing offshore. Even so, there was panic at the American Embassy, in downtown Saigon, where crowds of Vietnamese climbed -the high, barbed- wire-topped wall to get into the COlTI- pound. At one point during the mad scramble, I saw a group of Vietnamese drive a fire engine that had been parked in the compound through the back door of the Embassy to gain entry, while another group seized a sedan and two Jeeps and drove off to- ward the nearby Independence Palace, where Duong Van Minh, the newly chosen President, was holding frantic meetings trying to form a Cabinet- sOll1ething he never succeeded in doing, because telephone operators had aban- doned their switchboards and he could not reach the people he wanted. Thou- sands of Vietnamese ran hysterically